CEOs and Simpson-Bowles 3.0 -- social security & medicare will be on the table no matter who wins [View all]

Anyone watching the Washington budget debate over the past decade must have wondered why there didn’t seem to be any grown-ups in the room....Some grown-ups who have been noticeably absent from this conversation have been the heads of the country’s major corporations... (what a fucking laugh)

That’s about to change. Last week, the first battalion of CEOs showed up in Washington, reporting for duty...the breakdown of the Obama-Boehner talks on a grand bargain, the failure of the congressional super-committee — have convinced a number of CEOs that they had to get involved, particularly with a fiscal cliff looming in January.

Last week, the group, calling itself Fix the Debt, went public at a news conference urging the president and Congress to embrace a deficit-reduction plan along the lines suggested by the bipartisan Simpson-Bowles Commission, which included reforms of a tax code that produces too little and entitlement programs that spend too much. “Think of it as Simpson-Bowles 3.0...”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/ceos-and-simpson-bowles-30/2012/07/20/gJQAMLfp0W_story.html

Warren Buffett's WAPO won't let me read the rest without registering, but here's a comment from a reader:

Pearlstein says that “the vast majority of corporate executives would jump at signing on to a long-term budget plan that combines entitlement cuts with increased revenue.” Of course they would. Those big supply-side deficits and debt not only gave corporations and the rich huge subsidies, but also they relied on borrowing from Social Security surplus funds, to be paid back from Treasury bonds. The debt is coming due, and the big boys who’ve made out so handsomely don’t want to pay up.

Obtusely, Pearlstein writes that “it’s great that dozens of the nation’s top business leaders have decided to join this fight and put some serious money behind it. “ No Steve, it isn’t. Because the big boys realize that even if they spend $278 million trying to get a budget deal that overlooks what they did to the economy and passes on any punishment, a deal that includes “cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid” will lessen what they have to fork over, and will “provide the captains of industry a Bain Capital-like return on investment.”

And for them, that’s the bottom line. Money over country. Self over “We, the People.” If the captains of Wall Street get their way, the U.S. is one budget deal away from continued erosion of the middle class and the American standard of living.

"In the next two months, the group aims to raise $50 million to $100 million, mostly from big corporations, to build public support for a debt deal and flush out its details so it can be acted on by Congress sometime after the November elections."


They'll get cuts to SS & Medicare, and anything they give up they'll take back in a later session - but the cuts to the people will remain.

1/3 of seniors depend on SS for 90% or more of their income. 2/3 depend on it for 50% or more.

States are cutting medicaid. SS & Medicare are still on the table.

They won't stop until they get what they want or until there is massive push-back from the people -- that's the bottom line.

They are killing people.